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A report by Samara Canada garnered a
lot of attention recently as punditsreacted to what has been the
elephant in the room for a decade. Another report echoed Samara's conclusions. To no one's surprise, Canadians
care less and less about politics. Less of us vote, less of us
volunteer for campaigns, and less of us even talk about politics
among ourselves. As a young Canadian, political disengagement among
my generation has been a constant part of my life. Samara made sure
to define political engagement as more than simply posting about it
on Facebook or reading political news – it required active
involvement in the political community. For Samara, participating in
the politics of a democratic state requires action and effort. It
does not work without it, which unfortunately is too much to ask many
Canadians especially those under the age of 30.

It wasn't always like this, was it?

Democracy came to Canada slowly, albeit
peacefully. Jeff McNairn examines the progression of democracy in
English Canada in his work, The Capacity to Judge. He traces
the rise of “public opinion,” a term that seems natural and
well-worn today, but for the Upper Canadians during the first half of
the 19th century, “public opinion” represented a
crucial new way to govern the state. For the first time, Canadians
regularly and publicly commented on political issues rather than
leave it to British authorities to decide. The Enlightenment
envisioned by philosopher Immanuel Kant had arrived. Though
Enlightenment ideas had a long history and many other contributors,
it was significant that Canadians had finally realised they had
Kant's “freedom to make public use of one's reason in all matters.”
The importance of what seems like such a simple liberty to us cannot
be overemphasized. To allow individuals to comment on how they were
governed, using their own personal reasoning whatever it may be, was
the very foundation of democratic government. You could not only
express your opinion, but you could try to convince others to agree
with you. The power to govern was granted by the people, not by
decree or hereditary lines. For the first time, Canadians began to
govern themselves.

Reformers called for, and received,
“responsible government” in Canada that answered to the people,
not a British monarch. Newspapers appeared all over the colony as
political debates raged in small town taverns and large, urban
centres. Voluntary associations, like masonic lodges, debating
societies, agricultural societies, and libraries, all brought
different Canadians together to talk about the issues of the day.
Often it wasn’t even about politics, but it represented community
engagement. Canadians cared about their communities. Eighty percent
of adult Upper Canadians could read and write in 1840, so
participation for most was easy if they chose to be engaged.
Democracy grew, vote by vote, voice by voice. Even the Parliamentary
deadlock between the French and English after the Union of Canada in
1840 did not dampen the enthusiasm for Democracy.

So far Canada sounds like a hotbed of
political engagement, as long as you were a white male, weren't poor
and preferably originated from Britain. While there were still
limitations of gender, class and ethnicity, the road to Confederation
was vastly smoother than the path of our cousins in the First British
North America, the United States. Both nations' adoption of
democracy was eagerly desired by its citizens, though Canadians were
less likely to express it through gunfire. Likewise, today both of
our countries seem to suffer from the same cynicism in regards to
democratic government.

What happened?

It is difficult to pinpoint the
weakening pulse of social engagement with democratic government in
North America. There are so many anecdotes and too few sources for
historians to point to any event, or day, or year and say, “ah,
that is where we changed.” Such transformations are slow, hard to
detect by those who look for them and barely perceived by those who
lived them. So what follows is more about questions than answers.

Perhaps people got sick of the
government telling them what to do. Not only did the American hippie
counter-culture movement distrust the government that was sending
young men to die in Vietnam against their will, but President Nixon's
incredible betrayal of public trust in the Watergate scandal a few years later only
heightened political cynicism. Canada, meanwhile, saw Prime Minister
Pierre Trudeau alienate the West and Quebec, also through an
increasingly more powerful government that dictated policies to the
people. Even though Trudeau believed his actions were making a
better Canada, many disagreed. Seemingly unable to influence the
actions in the halls of power, Westerners and Quebecois turned to
regionally focused parties that gave hope to some level of
representation in Ottawa, as they sought to reinvigorate democratic
action. Unfortunately, many more probably turned away from politics
altogether.

Perhaps it was the new way of doing
politics. In the early 60s, Prime Minister Lester Pearson brought in
an advertising company to sell the Liberal brand to Canadians. It
had taken a beating since repeatedly coming up against the
Conservative leader, the populist
charismatic, everyman John D. Diefenbaker. In the late 50s and early
60s, the Liberal party had little to celebrate. Diefenbaker had
turned a Conservative minority into one of the largest Parliamentary
majorities in Canadian history. Pearson decided to copy the success
of the young John F. Kennedy, the Democrat who won the 1960
Presidential election against his Republican opponent and political
veteran Richard Nixon. His slick ads that predominantly focused on
Kennedy's handsome face created a Kennedy brand –not necessarily
based on policies, but on likability. The famous television debate
with a sweaty Nixon under the TV lights while Kennedy appeared calm
and collected swung the election to the Democrat's favour, despite
the fact that many listening over radio believed Nixon had performed
better. Pearson, knowing that many Canadians felt more comfortable
with Diefenbaker, had to build his own brand. Public opinion then
cared less about rational expression of positions and increasingly
about the popularity contest between political leaders. Pearson went
on to win the election of 1963. Brand building in Canadian politics
would be perfected within a decade by his successor, Pierre Trudeau.
“Trudeaumania” swept the nation and the Liberals won their first
majority in a decade. Though, as I mentioned, many would be
disenchanted with the suave politician soon enough.

So as voters have
become disengaged from politics, so have our politicians. The one-way
interaction of television allowed politicians to shape public opinion
without engaging citizens. The lessons of past elections is that less
substance is less easily attacked, or at least more easily defended.
The more politicians have separated themselves from the political
process and won elections, the more voters have disengaged with
politics, and the more disengaged politicians are successful.
Arguably, this cycle has been occurring for a long time, but
certainly it has worsened since the 1960s as political cynicism
became ingrained in our political culture. Voter turnout dropped
federally, provincially and municipally – fewer and fewer Canadians
trusted politicians or believed they could make a difference.
Without that confidence, public opinion lost its power.

The future looks
brighter though, as the age of television politics draws to a close.

In article touched on this issue in, of
all places, The Canadian Parliamentary Review. The Hon. Monte
Solberg, a former Reform-Alliance-Conservative MP and Cabinet
Minister, wrote about social media and the political process. He
argues that the content of the message, rather than the medium, is
more important for the political process. The politician must decide
between “cheap input” and “authentic input.” Cheap input,
which consists of “methods of communicating with very low barriers
to entry” such as form letters, mass emails, twitter, petitions,
etc., should be ignored in favoured of thoughtful and heartfelt
letters or emails. Regardless of the medium, he concludes, the
message and its content will always be more important. Like Samara
Canada, Solberg believed that political engagement has a standard
which must be reached to be influential. Increased interaction with
public opinion is not necessarily an improved interaction

What does the
Canadian disengaged with politics today learn from this article?

Today, like
Solberg inadvertently suggests, we are on the precipice of another
transformation. The internet and computers offer the possibility of
citizens becoming involved in democracy again. Samara Canada and
Solberg are wrong to dismiss the “cheap input” of Facebook and
Twitter. Solberg favours genuine letters as a sign of a constituent
carrying through on their thoughts at election time, which is a fair
approach given the concerns of a politician. What's more important
though is that someone engaged in the political process even in a
minimal way.

What would Kant
make of the internet? Would he praise the freedom to use one's
reason on Facebook and Twitter, even if it's in 140 characters?
Would the cacophony of voices that online interactions create
outweigh the value of that freedom? I don't think so. Like the
taverns of Upper Canada that filled with discussions of the day, not
necessarily political ones, the internet represents a new genesis for
public opinion. It is a new place for people to interact with one
another and with their political representatives. It is easy to
forget that voting and volunteering for politics is the final step of
political engagement. Before that comes the everyday interaction of
conversations. How often do you discuss traffic congestion, or the
food at the farmer's market, or how nice the new flowers and trees
are outside of city hall? These are all political issues which
government policies affect. The “cheap input” of the internet
represents real conversations, that for some translate into real
action. For politicians and citizens alike, these interactions are
what first made public opinion into the governing force of the
democratic state.